Between Two Lungs
by Littlefoot the Warrior
Summary: Ronnie Evers is your normal anthropology/paleontology lab assistant, until one day the Doctor sweeps her off her feet to travel Time & Space. There are things she doesn't know about herself, things that will change the Doctors future. Eventual Doctor/OC
1. Jovole Invasion p1

Ronnie woke up to the clock radio blaring music. It was her least favorite song, but she always played her least favorite radio station so she would actually get up to turn it off. It was a common tactic of hers.

After crossing the small studio apartment to the clock radio to turn it off, Ronnie picked up her journal and began writing. Every morning, she would right down her dreams and nightmares, and every night she would write down the day's events. It was a routine, one she had been using ever since she could write.

Remembering her dream, she wrote down the few details she could remember. The only true one that stuck in her head was the big, blue box. It was the only part she remembered from last night's dream.

Closing the notebook, Ronnie fell face-first on her bed. Her studio apartment was the cheapest thing she could buy in New York City –a $2,000 month rent, only 300 square feet, barely a bathroom, and the exterior wall was pure windowpane. It left for little privacy when she had friends and family over, but her Murphy bed was useful for creating space.

The kitchen would be a fright for an avid cooker. There was 4 total square feet of counter space, no oven, a mini-fridge, a microwave, and a two-burner stovetop. She didn't even have a dining table; she just sat on her couch or her bed watching the television.

The only luxuries of her frightful studio apartment were the miraculous view of the New York City skyline, and the fireplace. It was ornate, large and beautiful. Ronnie stored all her most prized possessions on it: her high school and two college diplomas; family and friend photos; her grandfather's fob watch; an old camera from the 1970's she used avidly; and her most favorite books: Paper Towns, Divergent, The View from the Center of the Universe, How Did You Get This Number, and The Fault in Our Stars. Ronnie was an avid reader, but these were the books she read most often.

Ronnie's mobile buzzed, interrupting her little lie-down. Stiff from sleep, she shuffled over to the computer desk and snatched up the iPhone. There were four texts from her (seemingly deranged) co-worker, Marcus.

.

_3:04 am_

_from: Marcus Paxif_

_**Ronnie, I know you're still sleeping but I really hope you get this because I need you at the study now!**_

_4:57 am_

_from: Marcus Paxif_

_**Ronnie, I found something. Please respond.**_

_4:59 am_

_from: Marcus Paxif_

_**Ronnie, I **_**really**_** need you down here. Why doesn't your stupid assistant work start any earlier?**_

Ronnie read the text that just buzzed.

_5:15 am_

_from: Marcus Paxif_

_**Okay, um, I'm going to just come get you because obviously you aren't getting up.**_

.

"Fucking hell." Ronnie sighed. She set the phone down on the table and trudged over to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. Clothes were not a problem; she always picked out her outfit before going to sleep.

As the coffee maker started whirring, Ronnie picked up the clothes she left out the night before. It was a simple outfit; black skinny jeans, white hi-top converse, and a flowing grey sleeveless blouse that buttoned up to her neck. Never quite a conventional look, but Ronnie didn't care what she wore on her feet. They were always covered by plastic lab booties anyways.

Not bothering to brush it, Ronnie pinned back one side of her shoulder-length, brown, wavy hair. Marcus didn't care, he never took interest in Ronnie, and Ronnie could care less about if Marcus fancied her or not.

When the coffee stopped brewing, the buzzer on her door went off. Leaving the bathroom, Ronnie went up to the speaker by the door to buzz Marcus in.

Only a minute passed until Marcus softly knocked on her door, then knocked louder. When she answered it, she noticed that Marcus was absolutely disheveled looking. His Ryan-Gosling hair was sticking up in all directions, he clearly hadn't shaved this morning, he was wearing the same clothes as he was yesterday, and he carried a thick manila folder.

"What the hell, Marcus?" you groan, but he pushes past you and quickly shuts the door. He drops the manila folder on your unmade bed, and sighs as he plops down on it.

"I found something. And it might change everything we know about history." His tired eyes were wild with excitement.

"What is it?"

"I found secret files, made by UNIT, that directly correlate to history being made and remade by extraterrestrials."

"Are. You. Kidding. Me." You glare, "You dragged me out of my bed at five in the morning to tell me that aliens are behind history? Did you only come to me about this because I've been looking at the bones of a not-very-human human?"

"You are a true archeologist, Ronnie. You may be an assistant but you assist a total bone-head, no pun intended." He stands up, moving his hands up and down. He's always been eccentric, but never this mad.

"And what are in these files exactly?" Ronnie groans, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"They all link back to this one guy, and he's been helping UNIT since the 60's. I kinda stole their files, but only in research as to why there are two different copies of a hieroglyph in New Mexico, that both start out the same way but both end differently. But the weirdest part is today, we see one version, but a hundred years ago, somebody took this photograph," he takes an old photograph from about 1910, "and the hieroglyph is completely different."

"It could just be some idiot's idea of a joke. People find these hieroglyphs and change them to mess with archeologists like us."

"But look at the one you see today. The hieroglyph changed in 1922, and the new one had a carving of something really strange," he pulls out another old photograph, one that is up close on the glyph. It's a small carving, but it's recognizable. "A police call box. If you look at the color photo today, you can see that it's been pained blue. Police call boxes were introduced in the 50's, so it can't be a fake. I did some research on these blue police boxes, and I also added 'time,' and a link to some nutjob's blog came up. They mostly just rambled on and on about this time traveling alien and his police box, but they mentioned UNIT, and Torchwood, and some gut named Harold Saxon who was prime minister in England for like a day, and I thought of you, since you're British and all, and they said alien, and I keep telling you that those bones you've been studying for the past two weeks aren't early human at all, they're alien."

Ronnie gives Marcus a confused look. She dreamed of the blue police box, but never in it's entirety, or that the magic world that was inside was real.

"And you are completely sure that this isn't some fake scam that you've mistaken for the truth?" Ronnie crossed her arms in annoyance.

"I'm positive. I even stole Torchwood files that were contained by UNIT, and they talk about the blue police box and the man who travels inside it."

"Who's the man?"

"Nobody knows his name, he just calls himself by one name."

"What's that?"

"The Doctor."


	2. Jovole Invasion p2

"You're completely mad." Ronnie glared at Marcus, who whined and shoved the file at her.

"Just look! There are traces of the Doctor all throughout history, looped into important events, saving the world, that sort of thing. But he never gets publicly recognized. He becomes an anomaly. This one here," Marcus fishes around for a paper, "states from a record in the year _5412_, which sounds crazy but based on the fact that there is all sorts of time travel out there, its not quite so crazy, but anyways! It's a quote from some woman, 'we get that word from you, you know. The word for healer, and wise man throughout the universe.' The Doctor, he created the name, we get it from him!"

"So?"

"So? SO? If we can find this man, it might be the most spectacular discovery yet! We could become famous, rich and famous!" Marcus' eyes were animated, and full of greed."

"Okay," Ronnie started, "Say that you are right, and the Doctor is real. Would you really want to capture a man who is the sole cause of our world today? One who saves so many lives?" Marcus looked at her as if she were stupid.

"Sure, yeah we might be dooming the universe, but look at it this way. We'd be rich and famous!" He grinned wildly.

"Yeah, you're mad beyond hope." Ronnie pushed Marcus out the front door. Shutting it, she returned to sanity and reality.

Marcus had taken the file out the door with him, but a small slip of paper had made its way out of the file and now sat on the floor. Bending down to pick it up, Ronnie saw that it read:

**TARDIS P#: 20-1-18-4-9-19**

Ronnie shoved the slip of paper in her pocket before snatching up her purse and coat to go to the Laboratory.

-.-.-.-

Outside the tall science building at NYU, Ronnie looked around on shock. Some sort of secret army was stationed outside the offices, and above the building, was floating–_a spaceship?_

Ronnie panicked. Was everything Marcus told her right? Were aliens real? It sure seemed like it to her –an entire _ship_ was floating above the entire city block. She ran up to one of the officers stationed outside the office doors, with a badge that read "UNIT"

_UNIT? Marcus mentioned them this morning…_ Ronnie shook her head of thoughts and continued forward. Another guard side-stepped in front of her, cutting off.

"Where do you think you're going?" the officer asked her, looking down his rather large nose.

"I _work_ here, thank you very much!" She spat at him, but upon saying this, he pushed her by the small of her back beyond the police barriers to the front door to the tall building, where another officer led her towards the elevator.

"Can I please ask what the _hell_ is going on?"

"Theres been an incident, m'am. A species called the Jovole have located the body of one of their ancestors here, and they think we killed them." The UNIT officer told her in the elevator.

"Wait–what do the Jovole look like?" Ronnie made the connection, and the officer handed her a folded-up piece of paper. She looked at the picture, and almost smiled.

"I know exactly what to do. I can handle this." She gave the man in the red beret the paper.

"Well, we already have someone handling it. Or at least, _trying_ to handle it."

"Who?" Ronnie laughed. No-one understood that her big project had to directly correlate with the Jovole. They stepped out of the elevator.

"The Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor."

"No name?"

"His name is the Doctor, and he's our best specialist."

"Sure." Ronnie rolled her eyes. Suddenly, she remembered what Marcus had told her, that the Doctor was the sole guardian of the Universe. Could all of that really be true?

She had no time to dwell on it, for the UNIT officer pushed her against the wall. Fiery bullets zinged through the air, narrowly missing the two. At one end of the hall were five UNIT agents, firing weaponry at the other end of the hall, where short, purple men in black armor were firing back. Ronnie gasped, as the Jovole seemed to recognize her. One aimed his gun at her, and terror covered her face. She closed her eyes, whispering a silent prayer.

_Ra–_

Ronnie was interrupted by the UNIT officer, who escorted her, stood in front of her, and fell to the ground at the impact of the bullet. She screamed, and ran across the hall to the laboratory door. She was thankful that she wore converse today instead of heels.

She slammed the door behind her, and promptly locked it. There was nobody in the lab, which made the gunfight just outside the door a hundred times more frightening.

Running on pure instinct and adrenaline, Ronnie dashed to the metal drawers that held the mummified Jovole specimen. She pulled it onto a cart, and grabbed her surgical tools. Now that she knew that her specimen was not human, she could examine it better without trying to figure out why the structures are different. Ronnie took her surgical knife, and made one long incision down the chest, cutting open previously stitched incisions. She pinned back the skin, and poked around the decayed organs. At the base of what was probably a lung, a small black box she had not noticed before sat, embedded in the organ tissue. She pulled it out with her tweezers, and attempted to open it.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Came a male voice from behind her. Ronnie spun around, to see a tall man leaning up against a blue police box, which had not been there before. He wore a brown tweed jacket, a blue bowtie, a white button-up shirt and black suspenders. His hair looked funny, parted off to the side, poofing up over his face. Ronnie made the connections in her head.

"You're the Doctor." She gasped.

"Yes I am. And _you_ must be the young scientist who's working on the sole reason that New York is now being attacked."

"Uhm, yeah," she stammered, "you're an alien. Right?"

"Yu–p"

"But you have a British accent."

"Lots of planets have a British accent, I'll have you know." The Doctor stood up straighter, defensive. "But I'm not here to talk about accents, no, I'm here to talk about how we are going to convince the Jovole to cease fire. And you're going to help me!"

"How?" Ronnie questioned, "I'm a Laboratory assistant, this specimen is my _first ever_ project that I get to work on alone, and somehow, because of me, my city is under attack. Can you shed some light on _why I mean anything?_ I'm not important!"

"Oh, human girl, in all my 1,000 years of Time and Space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important." The Doctor stared her down, then took the small black box that was covered in dust. "Take my hand, we're going to save the world!" He grinned. Automatically, Ronnie let her hand take his, and the Doctor led her out the back door of the lab.

They ran from the lab to the roof, fast and non-stop. They dodged Jovolian gunshots and hid from incoming fleets of soldiers. Ronnie had never experienced more activity in her 25-year life than she had in those twenty minutes. When they could, the Doctor told her all about the Jovole, how they thought the humans killed this commander (who had been displaced in time to 200 B.C), and how they wanted revenge. The Doctor held tight to the small black box, while Ronnie held tight to the Doctor's large hand.

They stood atop the roof, 800 feet above the ground. Right above them, was the massive Jovolian spaceship. Ronnie gasped in awe, while the Doctor called up towards the ship.

"Take me to your leader!" he shouted, grinning wildly. Ronnie wondered how he could be so calm and playful in this situation.

Light particles surrounded them, and before she knew it, Ronnie stood, still holding the Doctor's hand, in the belly of the Jovolian spaceship.

"Oh my god." She gasped, clinging to the Doctor. He patted her shoulder, and whispered in her ear:

"Look strong, but not menacing."

Ronnie did as she was told, and the Doctor let go of her hand. She felt cold and alone, as the Doctor stepped forward to speak to what appeared to be the leader of the Jovole. Ronnie's head was fuzzy and spinning from all this new activity, but she could still hear what they were saying.

"You do not represent the humans, Time Lord."

"Of course I do, I've saved their lives enough to deserve that kind of role." The Doctor said in reply. "I have here _proof_ that no human ever killed your Lord General."

"You have the Lord General's black box? Impossible, a black box cannot be removed from a young body."

"Of course it's not possible. The Lord General was displaced in Time and Space, probably from the touch of a Weeping Angel. Those nasty buggers are known for doing such. But not the point, the point is, your Lord General was sent back to the year 200 B.C, Egypt. They worshiped him as a God, thus why he was so perfectly mummified at the time of his death."

"Then what was the cause of death?" the alien voice growled.

"Old age. Doesn't happen all too often with you lot, all whizzing about, entering wars. I went back to greet him, he seemed quite happy there. Now, if you would please _stop attacking this planet?_"

Ronnie's head cleared, and she could see the Doctor handing the short purple man the black box. The purple man plugged it into an intricate, massive computer-like thing, and turned it on. In foreign symbols, he read what appeared on the screen. After five minutes, the purple Jovole turned back towards the Doctor.

"Very well, Time Lord. We will leave this planet immediately."

"And never come back." The Doctor said in a deep, angry tone.

"Very well." The Jovole said hesitantly. Suddenly, the Doctor and Ronnie were back on the roof, all the other Jovole gone, and the ship starting to move away.

"Yeah! And don't think about coming back!" Ronnie shouted happily. The Doctor just grinned a little, happy to have just saved the future of the human race once again.

The Doctor and Ronnie walked back to the lab, where the blue police box still stood.

"This, Ronnie, is my TARDIS. It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

"It's a blue police box, though."

"It's a disguise. Got stuck on Police Box, however. Never really cared to fix the Chameleon circuit, I like it too much."

"Okay, but what does the TARDIS do?"

"It travels in Time and Space. I'm a Time Lord, the last of. I have nobody to travel with now."

"You've got me." Ronnie took his hand. The Doctor smiled down at her, and opened the doors with a snap of his fingers. She gasped, awestruck, at the enormous room in front of her. She stepped inside.

"It's bigger on the inside!" She stammered, eyes wide open. The orange room of metal, concrete and glass circled from the floor to the ceiling, like a sphere. At the center, on a large glass platform stood a tall console that reached all the way up to the top of the room.

"Yeah, it is." The Doctor grinned wildly. He dashed up to the console with long, crazy legs, and began to twist a few knobs, and pulled down on a large lever.

The TARDIS made a deep bell sound, indicating that she was ready for flight.

"All of Time and Space, everything that is, was or ever will be, where do you want to start?"

* * *

**So thats the end of the first "Episode" of Between Two Lungs! What do you all think?**

**Please review! **


	3. The Cosmos

"Can we go to your planet?" Ronnie leaned on the TARDIS console, taking in the technology. It was very steampunk, a mixture of a hundred different things.

"How about I show you deep space? Everyone loves deep space." The Doctor replied hastily, and pushed up another lever. He ran down the stairs and threw open the doors, as Ronnie gazed into the stars. She saw the galaxies, their gas clouds, stars and nearby planets, sprinkled on top of a black backdrop, that stretched far beyond the cosmos.

"It's beautiful." She reached her hand out, wanting to touch it. She pulled her arm back hesitantly, fearing she would fall out. The air inside the TARDIS was warm, but outside, it was freezing. Ice had formed on her fingertips from just two seconds of exposure. "Uh, Doctor, when you said 'everyone loves deep space,' who's 'everyone?'"

"Just some friends I traveled with. They're all gone now, off having their own adventures." He answered truthfully. But in his truth, Ronnie saw sadness. Has he lost anyone to Death before?

"How could they leave this?"

"You'd be surprised, actually. They all have to leave in the end."

"Did any of them…die?"

The Doctor looked at her, surprised by her question. "A great friend once told me, 'Everything has it's time. Everything ends.' I hold her words to heart. Death is never expected, not in the least. Life is an illusion, a word we use to describe the time of a person, and death is a word to describe the end of their time. What happens before life and after death are never truly known, but we all know what happens during life and before death. Because we can measure those things, but with death, we cannot fathom the word itself."

Ronnie stayed silent after the Doctor's words. They touched her, as they watched the passage of the Universe before them, the warmth of the TARDIS sweeping over her shoulders, extending into the cold vacuum of the cosmos.

* * *

**A/N:**

**Yes I know this was short, but it's a perspective of how dark this story is going to be. Also, I'll be throwing random philosophies in here and there, because thats who I am.**


	4. Shanghai'd

The TARDIS landed, and Ronnie was the first out the door. She stepped out into a dingy street, the road made of cobblestone, the buildings made of brick, stone and paneled wood. A horse-drawn carriage rolled past the alleyway the TARDIS had landed in, making shadows in the light of the streetlamps. Ronnie walked out towards the street, followed by the Doctor.

"Where are we?"

"Portland Oregon, 1875. Quite the popular time period for this town, one with quite a history. I thought it would be a nice, easy first trip." The Doctor replied, stretching his bracers with his thumbs. Suddenly, a woman ran past them, dressed in American Victorian eveningwear, screaming to the people strolling down the street.

"He's been taken! They took my husband!"

"So much for an easy trip." Ronnie mumbled into the Doctor's ear, but he didn't reply, for he was already running towards the crying woman.

"Excuse me 'mam, but _who_ took your husband?" The Doctor asked her.

"The men, at the saloon, they dragged him away to the tunnels!" and she broke into sobs.

"I'm sorry, but what tunnels?" Ronnie asked.

"Oh, I forgot." The Doctor smacked his forehead. "This is the time of the Shanghaiing."

"What?"

"You see, traders and businessmen built these tunnels under the city, to transport goods from the river docks to their stores and restaurants faster. But some not-very-nice people got access to these tunnels, and started kidnapping people through these tunnels, selling the men as white slaves to foreign countries, and the women as sex slaves to just about anyone. And since these tunnels connected directly to places like bars, it was very easy to get the drunken men into the tunnels. Of course, in your day, they're boarded up, caved in and became a tourist attraction, but in this decade? Ooh, they're dangerous. Tradesmen don't use it as goods transport anymore."

"Well, that's nice. So what do we do?"

"We try to get the people back, of course!" the Doctor patted the confused woman's shoulder, and took Ronnie's hand. He dragged her off to the direction that the woman was running from, eager to get the woman's husband back.

-.-.-.-

"This was a bad idea." Ronnie mutters, as the Doctor attempts to lift open a large steel bar that keeps the door to the basement of the Edenbeyer Saloon closed. They had just spent the last hour glancing around the bar, looking for Shanghaiers and clues as to where the tunnel was located. They had seen two rugged-looking men emerge from the back room, where Ronnie and the Doctor had immediately dashed to.

She stood, waiting for the Doctor to finish fiddling with the molecular composure of the steel with his sonic screwdriver. She remembered that morning's happenings. It seemed like years ago, well, years in the future, but she had not been awake for more than eight hours. So many things had happened in such a short time.

Then her mind returned to last night's dream. She dreamed of a blue police box, and it's magical world. Now she realized that there really was a blue police box, and the magical world she only dreamed of was real. She remembered dreaming of Time Lords and TARDISes, aliens and war, death and destruction. She had asked the Doctor earlier about visiting his planet, and at that moment, she remembered dreaming about the death of it. She had seen the planet collapse, the death of billions of Time Lords and Ladies, elders and children. Ronnie had never remembered so much of her dreams.

But were they just dreams? Or were they visions of the past? She was a human, who had never seen anything alien in her life. She was boring, a boring girl who grew up in a boring village in England with boring parents who shipped her off to live with her boring grandfather in New York, attended a boring high school until he died (a rather boring death), went back to England for one more boring year of high school with her boring classmates, went to her parent's boring funeral (they died in a car crash) then moved back to New York, attended six boring years at a boring university, getting a boring degree and a boring job.

How had someone so boring and unimportant have such vivid, beautiful dreams?

Then again, the Doctor said that nobody was unimportant. And she believed him–he had that affect on her. She, however, felt a twinge of mistrust towards the Doctor. She didn't know why, she just did. He was too strange. But she was strange, too. She had accepted this world of time travel and aliens all too fast for such a boring person, but she assumed it was because of her dreams. She had always dreamed such strange things.

"Do you have friends?" the Doctor asked her, ripping Ronnie from her thoughts. She thought it such a strange question, to ask if one had friends.

"I have a few mates from work, if that's what you mean. We hang out at the water-cooler, all that good friend stuff."

"No, I mean do you have any long-term friends? People who would miss you, you know."

"Yeah, a couple from my university years. Not family, though. Mum and Dad died just after my high school graduation."

"No friends from grade school?" he continued making small-talk, still sonic-ing the steel bar.

"No, I lived in New York with my grandfather for four years. If I even had friends, they would have lost all contact with me during that time." She shrugged. "Do you have friends?"

"Of course I do."

"Do you see them often?"

The Doctor seemed stunned at this question. "In all truth, I haven't seen a single friend in six or so years."

"_Six years?_ But that's so long a time!

"You forget that I am a thousand and two-hundred and fifty-three years old."

"How have you stayed so young,–"

"Regeneration?" they both said at the same time. The Doctor stopped sonic-ing the steel, and stared up at her. Ronnie herself seemed stunned at her knowledge of the Doctor.

"How did you know that?"

"I have these dreams," she admitted, "I've had them for as long as I can remember." Ronnie was about to continue, but was cut off by the sound of the steel door unlocking from the other side.

"Hide!" the Doctor whispered, and pulled her into a dark, narrow corridor. They stayed hidden as two more rather rugged-looking men sauntered out from the tunnel, not bothering to close the door. When they had disappeared up the stairs to the saloon, the Doctor squeezed back out of the thin corridor, pulling Ronnie through the now-open door.

The tunnel was pitch-black, and the Doctor held out his sonic screwdriver to light the way. What they could see in the dark was brick walls, wooden doors, bits of rubble on the ground and rats scurrying up the wooden beams.

Ronnie kept up with the Doctor as they ran, having no idea where they were. She knew they were underground, but she was under the Willamette River for all she knew. The Doctor said that the tunnels never went under the river, but she still wondered.

Once they reached another door, the Doctor tried to open a locked door with his sonic screwdriver.

"Doesn't work." He muttered, repeatedly hitting the metal contraption.

"What do you mean it doesn't work?" Ronnie asked, exasperated from running through the underground tunnels.

"It doesn't do wood!" he shouted, as if he had had to explain that notion far too often.

"Are you kidding me?" Ronnie rolled her eyes. With great strength, she leaned back on her left foot, and kicked down the door with her right.

"You do realize that you have just affected history?" the Doctor complained as she continued forward through the now-archway. "That door was to remain intact until 2789!"

"Oops." Ronnie rolled her eyes sarcastically.

As she was running, her foot sunk into a pile of goo.

"Blech!" She pulled her pink-slime covered shoe back, gagging. The Doctor bent down, scanning it with the sonic screwdriver.

"That's not human, is it?"

"No, its Salvatorian."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Salvatorian race is pretty humanoid, except they have red skin and fins. They're amphibious, half their population lives underwater due to their planet having only 10% land area."

"So why are they here, and what is that goop that I just stepped in?"

"They must be stealing slaves, like the human shanghaiers. When they want to leave some notification as to where their brothers and sisters should go, they spit out this 'goop' as you like to call it, but really it's just mucus. Human Shanghaiers think nothing of it; they're just grossed out like you are right now. It's the Salvatorians what know what they mean. The more they come across the mucus, the more they know they're going in the right direction.

"So we're dealing with aliens?"

"Yes, and as of right now the human shanghaiers are actually less common. Kidnapping was supposed to stop a couple years ago, so the men we see coming out of the tunnels must be Salvatorians with perception filters."

"Yes, because that makes _so_ much more sense."

"Oi, don't mock me!" The Doctor stood up. "Anyways, we better follow the mucus. Have to stop these Salvatorians once and for all, eh?" he took Ronnie's hand, and the two ran down the tunnels, avoiding the piles of mucus.

They finally emerged from the cold tunnel into the warm night air. Ronnie looked around where they stood; behind them was a tall stone-brick wall with the steel door they'd just emerged from, beneath their feet a wooden dock, the flow of the river making it slowly bounce up and down. In front of them stood a tall, glorious looking wooden ship. But the Doctor raised his sonic at it, and the image of the ship jumped, and dissolved away into the true ship, with a curving metal hull and font glass plate windows.

"That's their whole ship?" Ronnie raised her eyebrow at the tiny thing.

"No, it's just a vessel. When they kidnap as many humans as they can, they'll fly into the earth's orbital field, where the big ship is waiting to take all of them back to Krom-1, a market planet, to be sold as slaves."

"So what, do we break in there and free all the humans?"

"Something like that." The Doctor shrugged. He opened the hull door, to find a main cargo space. Ten humans lay, stacked upon each other, knocked out cold. Ronnie ran towards them, and took the pulse of the nearest woman.

"Her heart rate is speeding up." Ronnie reported.

"That means the knock-out drops they were given are wearing off. Cover your nose, this is going to smell." The Doctor took out a small bottle of green fluid from his jacket, and opened the cap. Even with plugging her nose, Ronne could still smell the gas. The combination of the green fluid and the oxygen in the air made a foul-smelling gas, that started to wake up the men and women in the cargo hold.

"Hey! You!" came a voice from behind them. Ronnie spun around on her heels to see a Salvatorian male, who was now raising a gun at her. On pure instinct, she took hold of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver from his hand, and used it to disable the enemy's weapon. Ronnie rushed forward, and elbowed the alien in the gills on its neck. He dropped to the floor of the ship, coughing.

"Did you have to hit him?" the Doctor complained, as Ronnie knelt down by the Salvatorian. She took the gun from his hands and threw it across the room, as the Doctor directed the ten people out of the vessel. Ronnie was last to leave, until the male Salvatorian grabbed her by the shirtcollar and dragged her down.

"Ronnie!" the Doctor yelled, as the Salvatorian closed the hull door. She struggled against the alien's hold on her, as he forced open her mouth, pouring a few drops of clear liquid down her throat. She heard the Doctor's yells as she slipped into unconsciousness.

-.-.-.-

A bright, white light shone into her eyes, making them water. She blinked repeatedly, and tried to sit up. Ronnie found her arms and legs bound to a cold, metal table. Looking around her, she saw more Salvatorians in surgical gear. Ronnie lifted her head, to see her button-up shirt had been completely unbuttoned, and small sensor cables stuck on her bare chest. She tried to scream, or do something to divert their attention from what ever they were doing to her chest, but her throat was dry and her mouth gagged. She thrashed, still strapped to the table. One of the Salvatorians buckled another restraint, but this time over her neck and forehead. She could not see or understand why they were monitoring her chest; all she knew was that her breasts were exposed, leaving her feeling completely uncomfortable in front of all these aliens.

The lights in the room suddenly turned off, and the Salvatorians mumbled to each other, concerned. Emergency power lights came on, and a voice came on over the speakers:

"Hell–ooo Salvatorains! Normally I would leave you in peace but you have taken too many humans for me to simply ignore you. I've already transported all your slaves from the cargo hold back to their homes, where they belong."

Ronnie smiled inwardly at the voice of the Doctor. She tried to cry out, to tell him where she was, but the gag around her mouth kept her voice from flowing.

"You also seem to have taken a good friend of mine, and I want her back. If she is unharmed, then you might just leave this galaxy alive." His voice deepened, a dark, angry tone sending fear even into Ronnie's heart.

The Salvatorians who were in the room with Ronnie filed out, one by one. She kicked and thrashed at her restraints. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for anything that could possibly help her. But she was too well tied down, and her chest suddenly started hurting, as if the anesthesia kept any pain at bay.

Her eyes landed on a slim, small figure in the corner of the room. She appeared to be a young Salvatorian, eyes filled with concern and curiosity. The young alien girl stepped forward, slowly, towards Ronnie.

Ronnie trembled in fear, afraid of what this young girl would do to her. Her red-skinned hands reached down to Ronnie's leg restraints, and pulled them loose. She quickly did the same with the arms, until all of Ronnie's restraints were untied. She elbowed the alien in the gut, sending her back against the wall, pinning her there.

"Why did your people kidnap me?" Ronnie growled.

The young alien gasped for air, "They wanted to know if it was true…I am just an assistant…do not harm me please!" and with that, Ronnie let go of the girl, letting her fall to the floor. She ran out of the room, to go find the Doctor.

It was until she had come across the front of the ship did she realize that she was now in space, orbiting nineteenth-century Earth. Great, big windows surrounded what appeared to be a control bay, now empty of all people. She watched as escape pods flew away from the ship and Earth, leaving the current solar system.

The lights came back on, and in the reflection of the windows, Ronnie saw on her still-bare chest a long, recently stitched-up scar, circling around her right breast. Upon seeing the cut line, she gasped in pain, clutching her burning scars. Ronnie screamed in pain, as she sunk to the floor.

Two strong hands pulled her up, and she looked at the face of the Doctor. Her pain drowned out his words that he spoke, as he lifted her up, and ran from the control room, carrying her to the TARDIS, which was located in a maintenance room. He carried her into the TARDIS medical bay, and laid her on one of the tables.

"Calm down, it'll all be okay." His words tried to soothe her. A light from above scanned her, and the Doctor looked at the monitor next to the table she lay on. He sighed in relief, and pulled out the poorly stitched stitches. He professionally cleaned the incisions, and re-stitched them perfectly.

"What…what did they do to me?" Ronnie managed to speak.

"Nothing, they just cut you open for a look. Nothing is missing, and nothing is new. You are 100% human, everything is fine."

"But Doctor…they were monitoring my chest…why would they do that?"

"I have no idea." His face was filled with rage and concern. "They'll find a nice surprise on each of their escape pods, that's for sure." He muttered darkly. Ronnie wondered what the 'surprise' was, until she remembered his words on the intercom.

"_If she is unharmed, you might just leave this galaxy alive."_

Then Ronnie knew. She _was_ harmed, and even though the Doctor didn't know it, he planed for each of their deaths anyways. Even the young girl who helped her free was going to die.

-.-.-.-

Twelve Earth-hours later, Ronnie woke up in the medical bay, and made her way out to the console room. She watches silently as the Doctor gripped the console, knuckles white in fury. She could not see his face behind his mop of hair that fell down in front of his eyes as his head was bent downwards.

"Doctor?" Ronnie muttered. She had an orange blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she wrapped it tighter around her body. He looked up, sadness and fury behind his face.

"I'm so sorry, Ronnie. I never wanted you to get hurt, not now, not ever."

Ronnie walked up the steps to him, and still holding onto the corners of the blanket, wrapped her arms around the Doctor. He stifled a sob.

"Nobody plans for these things. I'm fine, I'm not dead."

"If you want to leave, I can understand."

"Why would I leave you?" She murmured softly.

* * *

**Ooh, nobody touches the Doctor's companions!**

**Review?**


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